VisiCalc was the first commercially successful spreadsheet application in 1979. The developers behind this app were Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston. How did all start: Like most of the successful products, the idea behind the product was the result of human frustation.The story is that Dan Bricklin was preparing a spread sheet analysis for a Harvard Business School “case study” report and had two alternatives: 1) do it by hand or 2) use a clumsy time-sharing mainframe program. Bricklin thought there must be a better way. He wanted a program where people could visualize the spreadsheet as they created it. His metaphor was “an electronic blackboard and electronic chalk in a classroom.” : He did not do major marketing analysis to figure out whether his app will have a potential.He had a need and went about developing it..Emphasizes the need of execution rather than analysis When did they decide to commercialize it ? During the fall of 1978, Daniel Fylstra, founding Associate Editor of Byte Magazine, joined Bricklin and Frankston in developing VisiCalc. Fylstra was also an MIT/HBS graduate. Fylstra was “marketing-oriented” and suggested that the product would be viable if it could run on an Apple micro-computer. Bricklin and Frankston formed Software Arts Corporation on January 2, 1979. In May 1979, Fylstra and his firm Personal Software (later renamed VisiCorp) began marketing “VisiCalc” with a teaser ad in Byte Magazine. The name “VisiCalc” is a compressed form of the phrase “visible calculator” :Team with a marketing personnel is a must. My personal experience also suggests the same. :Get a feel of what market might want.In this case, there was a hunch that people would prefer the app on Mac What came after VisiCalc?

The market for electronic spreadsheet software was growing rapidly in the early 1980s and VisiCalc stakeholders were slow to respond to the introduction of the IBM PC that used an Intel computer chip. Beginning in September 1983, legal conflicts between VisiCorp and Software Arts distracted the VisiCalc developers, Bricklin and Frankston. During this period, Mitch Kapor developed Lotus and his spreadsheet program quickly became the new industry spreadsheet standard.

:Watch out the competitors.Just becoz you have a great product, doesnt mean there will be better products.VisiCal were caught up in Innovator’s dilemma Where did Excel come from? The next milestone was the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Excel was originally written for the 512K Apple Macintosh in 1984-1985. Excel was one of the first spreadsheets to use a graphical interface with pull down menus and a point and click capability using a mouse pointing device. The Excel spreadsheet with a graphical user interface was easier for most people to use than the command line interface of PC-DOS spreadsheet products. Many people bought Apple Macintoshes so that they could use Bill Gates' Excel spreadsheet program. :Lotus lost the market share as it was too busy fighting the legal battle.In the current open source world, it is more important devising strategies to milk the purple cow of the company, than focusing on eliminating other cows in the market An ideal strategy for the product development would be split the firm in to 2 depts. One focusing on milking the current products and other thinking of new features, products..Everyonce in a while rotate people between the 2 departments.